Biography
Fascinated by life, drawn from experience, driven by emotion and the manifestation of energy. I try to imitate the way in which my mind breaks down sights, sounds, emotion and events into clusters of anarchic yet harmonious subatomic particles and reconstructs it into an image. My own experiences are illustrated through other real/fictional characters, animals or landscapes. At the moment I enjoy the raw surface of wood, often juxtaposed with smooth glass and painting or drawing on both surfaces. Often my technique is a meditative process like a transference of energy into the piece.
​
My objective with a finished work is for someone to connect to it on an emotional level. It is encouraged to create your own interpretation and therefore forging a personal connection instead of appreciating an artwork based on learnt knowledge of the artist or artwork. I see no shame in that.
​
“Images start off as energy that gain shape through words.” Mariëtte Bergh is a quiet watcher, a voyeur of people in the mundanity of their everyday. Her works interrogate the strange fiction of the day-to-day through imaginary characters and animal metaphors. Hers is the realm of the seeming incompatibility of opposing thoughts: routine and change, conformity and rebellion, something and nothing, mundane and mystery, image and text. Reverse-glass painting is Bergh’s favourite medium but she mixes this up with other materials such as oil and wood. Trained as a painter and designer, Bergh is fascinated by the potential of less conventional application as a tool in her art-making. Music, poetry and writing are big inspirations for her observations of humanity. In that somewhere space between the picture and the word is the energy that shapes her production." – Salon 91
​
Schooled at The National School of the Arts and studied art direction at Vega School in Johannesburg, Bergh worked for a couple of years as a graphic designer and art director before enjoying having the rug pulled from under her feet when she switched back to fine art. She relished this change as her free-fall independence.
​
SOLO EXHIBITIONS:
Bare Your Bones - 2012
Room, Johannesburg
Swindle - 2010
Left, Johannesburg
(independently organized)
We Don’t Belong - 2010
Left, Johannesburg
(independently organized)
GROUP EXHIBITIONS:
Days Of Being Wild - 2022
Cavalli Art Gallery, Somerset West
​
Gravity - 2014
Salon 91, Cape Town
Lovely Creatures - 2013
Culture Gallery, Cape Town
One In A Million - 2013
Salon 91, Cape Town
I’d Rather Be Swimming - 2012
Salon 91, Cape Town
Impression: Sunset - 2012
Salon 91, Cape Town
Art Of Happiness - 2012
Upstairs @ Bamboo Johannesburg
Life In A Picture - 2010
Rust en Vrede Gallery, Durbanville
Exposed - 2010
Hout Bay Gallery, Cape Town
Ansisters - 2005
Constitution Hill, Johannesburg